Compulsion

22

I gave Billy a few minutes, hoping he would cool down, then followed him to the house. I let myself in, not wanting to wake anyone. But I found Julia, her mother, and Garret standing in the living room, all of them looking uneasy. Billy had woken everyone in the house when he burst in, slamming the door behind him, cursing me, the Sandersons, and his own miserable existence all the way to his room.

"What happened?" Julia asked me. She was dressed in the simple white T-shirt I had watched her taking off. It barely covered her. As I looked at her, she glanced selfconsciously at the tops of her thighs.

"Why don't we talk about it privately?" I suggested.

"He screamed he wished he was dead," Garret said.

I wasn't sure which of the details Garret and Candace really needed to know. "He got into a fight tonight with some bullies. They're kids who bother Jason Sanderson all the time. Things got out of hand, and the Sandersons are worried about Billy's temper. They don't want him to spend time with their son anymore."

Candace shook her head in dismay.

"Was anyone badly hurt?" Julia said. "Did Billy…?"

"A broken arm sounds like the worst of it," I said. "There could be legal charges, but"-I caught Julia's eye- "let's talk about this privately and decide what you think we should do."

"I think that's a good idea," she said. We went into the dining room. Julia and I sat at the table, the lights dim in harmony with the early morning hour. I told her everything I knew.

"Billy's so charming it's easy to forget how much help he still needs," I said.

"Do you think he should go somewhere?" Julia asked. "A private hospital or something? Wouldn't that help him if he's charged with something?"

The idea of putting Billy in another hospital, right after Payne Whitney, wasn't very appealing to me, but I knew it might be the only answer. "We should talk with him about it, when he's able to. And we should call Carl Rossetti, in case Billy needs a lawyer again." I glanced at the clock. Almost 2:00 a.m. "The police haven't shown up so far. That's a good sign."

"Is there any where he could go that's… comfortable?" Julia asked. "You know, not a locked psych ward type of thing. That would be so horrible for him."

I thought about that for a few seconds. A possibility came to mind. "I could talk to Ed Shapiro, a friend of mine who runs the Riggs Center in Stockbridge," I said. "It's more like a retreat than a hospital. They call it a 'therapeutic community.' The patients live in cottages and get psychotherapy every day." I took a deep breath, shook my head. "I just don't know if they'd take someone with a history of violence like Billy's, even as a favor."

"It seemed like everything was going so well," Julia said. She took my hand. "Not much of a honeymoon."

Not much of a honeymoon. If I had stopped to think about that line, I might have realized I had heard it before- from Lilly. And it might have started me wondering about one very important similarity between the two women. But the trouble we were having with Billy was making me feel even closer to Julia. My mind was already starting to conceive of him as our child. I ran my fingers up the underside of Julia's arm, then stopped, noticing Garret at the entry way to the dining room. I took my hand back. We'd been careful to avoid physical contact in front of the boys. "What's up, champ?" I asked.

"I think I better tell you something," he said.

"What?" I asked.

Garret walked closer to us, his face solemn.

"Garret?" Julia said. "What is this about?"

"Billy," he said.

"You want to sit down?"

"No." He seemed jittery. "I wasn't going to say anything," he said, glancing first at me, then at Julia.

"What's bothering you?" I said.

"I found something," he said, the nail of his third finger picking at the skin at the tip of his thumb.

I waited.

"I was just hoping," he started. "I don't know what I was hoping."

"What did you find, Garret?" Julia asked, kindly but firmly.

"A cat," he said, looking up at her.

"A cat," I repeated, intuiting the rest, but hoping I was wrong.

"I was on my way to the stream." He looked at me. "There's a stream in the woods, way in back of the guest cottage. I go there sometimes, to think. So does Billy. And I found this cat."

"Dead," I said.

Garret nodded.

Julia's face fell. I instinctively reached for her hand again, but she quickly pulled it away, flashing me a look that reminded me to keep our intimacies under wraps.

"Maybe it just died," Garret said. "I mean, you never know."

"Sometimes you do," I said.

"I'm glad you told us," Julia said. "Thank you."

"Sorry," he said, more to me than his mother.

I shook my head. "Nothing to apologize for," I said, giving him the best smile I could muster. "You did the right thing. We didn't get Billy out of prison to watch him get himself put back in."

The door to Billy's bedroom was closed. I knocked. No response. "It's Frank," I said. Still, nothing. I gently tried the door. Locked. "Billy, let me in," I said. A few seconds passed, then the springs of his mattress creaked. A few seconds later the door opened-a little.

"What?" he said, without looking at me.

"Got a couple minutes?" I asked.

He turned around and headed back toward his bed. But he left the door open.

I walked into his room. He was seated on the edge of his bed, arms crossed, rocking slowly back and forth. "This is so unfair," he said bitterly.

I sat down next to him. "I think it is fair," I said.

He stopped rocking and looked at me as if I were betraying him.

"I don't think there's any way for the Sandersons to get inside your head and figure out why you were staring at their daughter," I said.

He looked down.

"And I think you went way beyond defending Jason," I said. "I think you exploded."

He shook his head, swallowed hard, as if he was about to cry again.

I put a hand on his shoulder. "You blacked out. It's lucky you didn't kill one of them."

"What do we do?" he asked, holding back his tears.

I felt as though he had opened the door the rest of the way. "I want to talk with a friend of mine who runs a place called the Riggs Center."

"A fucking psych ward again?" he said.

"It's not a psych ward. It's a place, like a retreat, out in western Mass. "

"Oh, sorry," he said. "My mistake. A funny farm."

"The medical director is a personal friend. He…"

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "Leave me alone."

I hadn't planned to bring up the cat Garret had found, but I needed to convince Billy to help himself, without destroying all hope for a relationship between the boys. "I found a cat in back of the guest cottage," I lied. "On the way to the stream?"

Billy looked at me, blinking nervously.

"A dead cat," I said.

The blinking stopped. "And?" he said.

"And that worries me, too," I said. "It should worry you."

"Why?" he said. "You think I killed it?"

I didn't respond, which Billy and I both understood to be my answer.

Something went out of Billy's eyes, something I hadn't fully seen until it was gone-his faith in me. What I couldn't know was whether it was anything more than the faith of a sociopath who had counted on me never to break ranks with him. He stood up. "Leave," he said, obviously trying to control himself. His hands balled up into fists.

"Billy-"

"Please," he said, the muscles in his arms twitching.

I stood up. "Think about what I suggested," I said. "It's the right thing to do." I walked past him and out of his room.

When I went to sleep, just before 3:00 A.M., lights were still burning in the main house. At 3:45 a.m. someone knocked on my front door. For some reason I assumed it would be Julia, up worrying about Billy, wanting to talk things through. I pulled myself out of bed, pulled on my jeans, and went to let her in. But when I looked through the glass door, I saw Billy standing there. For the first time, seeing him made me picture where my Browning Baby handgun was tucked away-in the nightstand drawer. I opened the door.

"I didn't want this to wait until the morning," he said, sounding apologetic.

"It is morning," I said with a wink.

"Right," he said. "I guess it is."

I thought about inviting him in, but thought again. "What's up?"

He looked straight at me. "I didn't kill any cat."

"Okay…" I said.

"But I'll go to that Riggs place."

I nodded. One step at a time, I thought to myself. Part of me was glad Billy was at least shamed enough by destroying a defenseless animal to deny having done it. If he went through with treatment, he could take the step of admitting what he had done later. "What changed your mind?"

"Garret."

"Garret?" I said.

"We talked-really talked-for the first time," Billy said. "About being adopted and living with Darwin and the beatings and everything. How I got the worst of it." He shrugged. "Garret feels like he let me down."

Maybe it had taken another crisis to start another phase of healing for the Bishops-this one a healing of the divide between Garret and Billy. "I'm glad for you," I said. "Both of you. It would be wonderful if you ended up being close."

"I told him what you wanted me to do, and he said I should do it. He asked me to do it. For him."

I would have preferred Billy fully accept that he needed help. But I wasn't going to turn down the gift from Garret. "I'll set it up," I said.

"Good," he said. He looked away, then back at me, almost shyly.

"What?" I asked.

"Would you take me there? To Riggs?" he said. "You know the doctor who runs it. If you were hanging out nearby, he might let you visit me during the first week or two."

"Sure," I said.

"That was Garret's idea, too. So if it's asking too much, or…"

"It's a great idea," I said.

Monday, July 22, 2002

By 9:30 a.m., Ed Shapiro had cleared Billy for a July 25 admission to Riggs, cutting the usual four-month waiting list to four days. It pays to have friends in quiet places.

Garret and Billy actually took a turn making breakfast for Julia, Candace, and me, whipping up waffles and sliced fruit like the pros do. I had to remind myself again of Billy's pathology in order to see past the goodwill filling the house to all the hard work it would take to keep Billy safe.

We planned to charter a sailboat and spend a lazy day together as a family. I stopped back at the cottage to grab a few things. A large manila envelope was sitting in the woven straw basket that hung next to my door. I picked it up and saw that it had been sent by Dr. Laura Mossberg from Payne Whitney, postmarked July 18.1 figured she had finally sent along one of the old medical records on Billy I had asked her for.

I opened the envelope on my way into the cottage, then sat down on the couch to read the cover letter:

P.S. I have also enclosed a copy of I Don't Want to Talk About It, a very good book on men and trauma. I hope you won't take offense (and that you might even take the time to read it).

I smiled. Talk about not giving up on a patient. And I wasn't even paying her. I started to read through the packet of medical records. Two pages in, I stopped short on a form marked "Screening Assessment Tool." My pulse moved into my temples as I read the first paragraph:

The form was signed by Paisley Marshall, MD, and dated April 15, 1999, about two years before Brooke and Tess Bishop were conceived.

My mind raced from one fact to the next, almost in disbelief. Darwin Bishop was infertile. Brooke and Tess Bishop were not his biological daughters. Julia had had an affair and become pregnant with the twins.

I flipped page after page, half-expecting to see a note describing Bishop's change of heart about the procedure, but instead stopped on a surgical note dated May 12, 1999:

Bishop's having declined a cross-over procedure, a more complicated vasectomy that can be reversed, meant his infertility would be permanent.

Suddenly, Julia's explanation about the letter Claire Buckley had found sounded even more incredible. Her therapist Marion Eisenstadt obviously hadn't been the intended recipient. Julia had written the letter to her lover. The father of her children.

The investigation into Brooke's murder hadn't simply failed to ferret out a romantic partner of Julia's. We had neglected to interview the twins' biological father-a potential suspect.

I thought of trying to reach North Anderson, but knew he would be in Paris for the next ten days, spending a seemingly well-earned vacation with Tina. And I wasn't sure I needed his help. I didn't have a shred of evidence, nor any real suspicion, that Darwin Bishop had been wrongly charged with Brooke's murder. My doubts centered on Julia; she had lied to me and left me in the dark. Her character was again in question.

I had a job to do, but this time it was for me to do alone: to find out exactly who I had fallen in love with.

I remember the rest of that day in snapshots: the sun-soaked vistas of Vineyard Sound, Julia's surreal beauty, Candace's quiet grace, Billy and Garret working the sails and rudder together, a strong breeze blowing the hair off their foreheads, making them look younger, stronger, more handsome than I had ever seen them. The scenes would have made perfect postcards, which should have made me wonder whether the serenity was real or staged. But my focus was on the big lie-Julia's lie. I turned it around in my mind, trying to find an angle that would allow me to explain it away, to excuse it without further inquiry. I was that in love with her.

There were parts of the lie I had already accepted. I had no illusion that Julia had been faithful to Darwin Bishop. I had no lingering expectation that she would fill me in on every chapter of her romantic life. And I could even accept a chapter that included her being impregnated by a man other than her husband.

What I couldn't dismiss was the fact that she had jeopardized the investigation into her daughter's murder by withholding information.

Something else bothered me. A lot. Why hadn't Darwin Bishop disclosed the fact that the twins were not his biological children? Wouldn't he have wanted the police to worry about another potential suspect? Or did he fear that a jury might more readily believe him capable of killing another man's child?

After a day chockful of photo ops, Julia, the boys, Candace, and I got back to the house just after seven. I would have waited until the next day to confront Julia, but she called the cottage just after midnight.

"Come see me," she whispered.

"In your room?" I said.

"The boys are sleeping," she said. "We wore them out."

"Why don't you come over here?" I asked.

She giggled. "Because I just showered, and my hair is wet, and I have no clothes on, and I'm already in bed."

"I'll be there," I said.

I let myself into the main house and walked up to Julia's room. Her door was open, but the lights were out, and the room was almost pitch black.

"Don't turn on the light," she whispered from bed. "Just close the door."

I did as she asked. "You like it when I can't see," I said.

"I'll be your eyes," she said. "I'm on my stomach. I have two pillows under my hips and another one I can bite down on, if I need to. Is that clear?"

I felt my way toward the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress. I reached out. My hand glided over the velvety smooth skin of Julia's lower back. I sighed. "We have to talk about something," I said.

"After," she said.

I let my hand move to the even softer curves of her ass before I summoned the resolve to pull away. "No," I said. "We need to talk first." I felt her pulling the sheet over her and reaching for the bedside lamp.

"What's going on?" she asked, squinting at me in the lamplight. She was holding the edge of the sheet just below her breasts.

I looked away, in order to focus my thoughts. The walls of the room were covered with pretty oil paintings of the ocean and marshes and with black-and-white photographs of Julia as a little girl and young woman. "I got some medical records in the mail from New York today," I said.

"And?" she said.

I looked back at her. She had drawn the sheet to her chin. I didn't see any reason to be subtle. "I know about the vasectomy," I said. "I know that Darwin didn't father the twins."

Julia looked at me blankly, as if she hadn't decided whether to respond directly or to be evasive.

"Why didn't you tell me during the investigation-me, or North Anderson?"

She nodded to herself, then looked back at me. "This may not make a lot of sense to you, but I didn't say anything because I promised Darwin I never would. I promised him before the twins were born, when he was pressuring me to get an abortion. Keeping what had happened a secret seemed to be the only thing that mattered to him." A bitter smile played across her lips. "I swore on Brooke's and Tess's lives."

"You should have told us," I said. "And not just so we could interview the twins' biological father. A man like Darwin might feel you forced him into a situation he didn't want to live with. He might have decided to fix things his own way. It goes to his motive."

"When you bury the truth the way Darwin and I agreed to," Julia said, "it's almost as if it becomes untouchable. Like it doesn't exist, anymore. I didn't even think of it as relevant to what happened. We were all so focused on Billy as the guilty one."

"When we had lunch together in Boston, at Bomboa," I said, "you asked me whether I thought Darwin was capable of destroying his 'flesh and blood.' Why did you choose those words?"

" 'Why did I choose those words?' You sound like a detective," she said.

"I'm no detective. I just want to know. Why those words?"

"No reason. I didn't mean it literally. It's a cliché. I meant his children." She paused. "They are, legally. I mean, we're married."

"And you still say the letter that Claire found… was to your therapist, not the man you got pregnant by."

She looked at me askance. "Now I get it," she said. "You don't believe me anymore. About anything."

I didn't respond.

"Because I didn't tell you everything about my sex life?” she half-shouted.

"Quiet," I said. "The boys."

"Because I didn't tell you," she said, barely keeping her voice down, "that my husband was so soured on the world and so controlling that he wouldn't give me children? I didn't spill my guts and tell you how it feels being treated like a pretty thing that's fun to fuck, knowing you'll never be a mother?" She shook her head. "This may come as a news flash, Frank, but I've been lonely. And scared. It hasn't been easy living with Darwin. So when I met someone a couple years ago who seemed to care about me, I reached out to him. I thought there was a chance we could have a life together. I got pregnant, and he couldn't handle it. We stopped seeing each other."

"Who was he?" I asked.

"I can't say," Julia said. "He's an acquaintance of Darwin's. He's very well known." She paused. "He was at Brooke's funeral. We didn't even speak."

"I'm supposed to believe you had a sexual relationship with an acquaintance of your husband's, bore his children, and have no contact with him now?"

"You know what I can't believe?" she said. "Where do you get off thinking that everything that happened to me before you arrived on the scene is your business? Have I asked you for a list of every woman you've fucked?" She looked away. "Leave me alone," she said.

"Julia…"

"Get out," she said. "Just get out."